**1. Introduction**

Utilization of marine mammals in general and of whales in particular has varied greatly across historical periods and geographical locations. From prehistoric times (e.g., Stringer *et al.* 2008), the use of these animals was opportunistic by taking advantage of animals either beached (animals arrived dead on the coast) or stranded (animals arrived live on the coast). Later shore whaling (active whaling using small boats launched from the coast for a few hours) took place, and later came the development of industrial whaling, which engaged larger vessels embarked in whaling expeditions that might have lasted up to several years at a time. The heyday of industrial whaling took place during the mid-nineteenth century and was epitomized by Yankee whaling (Sanderson 1993).

For the purposes of this chapter, I define Yankee whaling as an offshore fishery carried out by American whaling vessels between 1712 and 1925 (Starbuck 1876, p. 20; Hegarty 1959, p. 47). The geographical area considered as Caribbean Basin for the purpose of this chapter is defined as all the coasts (clockwise) of Venezuela, northern Colombia, eastern Central America, the Yucatán Peninsula, and all of the coasts of the Antilles from Cuba down to Trinidad including the Bahamas and Bermuda. The Bahamas are commonly included as part of the Caribbean Basin from a geological and cultural viewpoint. Bermuda, although being geographically an oceanic island in the western North Atlantic, has cultural ties to many of the Caribbean Basin countries including being the springboard for numerous whaling operations in the region (Romero 2006).

The aim of this chapter is to describe Yankee whaling in the Caribbean Basin in a historical context to understand its development, cultural, and ecological impact.

© 2012 Romero, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2012 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
